


I've Been Searching for You (Across Lifetimes)

by dramabeansoup



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Character Death, French Revolution, Multi, Reincarnation, World War 2, not detailed violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 13:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7316611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramabeansoup/pseuds/dramabeansoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the first time they've met; this won't be the last time. But maybe this is the one where it starts counting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Been Searching for You (Across Lifetimes)

**Author's Note:**

> This idea knocked me upside the head and actually forced me to sign up for this website. So here's the first fic I've written on here! I hope it's not a trainwreck.

The first time they meet, they don’t even have time to fall in love.

There’s a giant wave above them, looming, when they all lock eyes. People are running in a panic all around them, screaming in a language that decades and lifetimes from now will be lost to memory. The redheaded one reaches out, and the oldest of them takes her hand, but before they have a chance to connect with the other two, thousands of pounds of water come crashing down on them. The last thing any of them sees is the blindingly gentle smile of the youngest.  
____________________________

The second time they meet, things are only slightly calmer. It is a prison riot, in a snowy place in a desolate field somewhere so far north that to find it in the future would take months of hiking from the nearest civilization.

A prison guard is raising his gun, ready to shoot the boy in front of him, the one who had started the whole uprising in the first place. He has his name, Markov, stitched carefully onto his uniform by one of the nurses, a pretty young thing with hair the color of a weak sunset, pale skin, and when she sees him she blushes.

As he sights down his gun, he hears a young man shouting. His target is suddenly thrown out of the way, the dark flashing eyes and bright trickster grin replaced by a panicked face of clear blue eyes.

Markov pauses. His comrade does not. With a crack, a bullet fires into the younger one, killing him instantly. The older one has time for an accusing look before he too falls. Later, Markov will find their bodies among the others, and feel a pang of regret for reasons that he cannot understand.

The pretty nurse never speaks to him again.  
_____________________________

The seventh time they meet, a war has just ended. There is celebration in the streets, cheering and crying.

Hannah runs to her fiancé, James Ashland, who greets her with a cocky smile and a heavy limp. Behind her is their friend, Marcus, who is older and had promised to look after her while James went off to fight.

James produces someone else, a small young slip of a boy, proclaiming that Jackson had saved his life, and will be having dinner with them. If they all spend the night together that night, no one who notices is sober enough to remember it later.

In this life, they all marry happily, and live in the same town, where they raise their children as best friends. War never touches them again, in all their long lives.  
_____________________________

The ninth time they meet, it is the bloodiest revolution the world has ever seen.

She has snuck behind the barricade, in disguise with dirt smudged cheeks and hair chopped short. Marlon, the butcher, catches her, but instead of sending her home, he only smiles sadly at her and hands her a knife. She kisses his cheek when she leaves.

A boy, a bright-eyed boy with high hopes and a smile to block out the sun talks through the night, calling them to action, to fight for freedom and equality, to make France great again. When light comes, it brings soldiers, and at their head the young general John Alain steps like the second coming of God himself.  
The boy with the bright smile and the girl die in the first wave of fighting. The butcher kills John himself, for extinguishing their light, and then lives the rest of his (mercifully short) life feeling lost and alone, as if there were three people that needed to be standing next to him.  
____________________________

The lifetimes pass.

Some go by quickly, and some linger for decades. They do not always find each other in time. Sometimes it is only a twinge they get when walking by a cemetery, sometimes it is a smile from a stranger on the street that sticks with them for the rest of the week.

There is one lifetime where they meet as children, all of them, and grow up buying ice cream and chasing each other around the neighborhood. They go to the same college, get an apartment together. The night they have too much to drink and fall into bed with each other (all of them, together) is the first time they feel content. They celebrate every joy, every sorrow, and die a year apart at the ripe old ages of 80, 82, 79, and 85.

Sometimes only two of them meet, sometimes only three. There is a stretch of three lifetimes in which the three youngest grow increasingly panicked that they are missing something, before a fourth person who seems to know all of their hopes and dreams upon first sight finds them and smiles.  
_____________________________

All of these lifetimes, all of the grief and panic and happiness and joy lead up to a singular moment. They are standing on a landing in a drab apartment building in one of the best cities in the world, clutching cards and staring at each other as if it is the first (seventh, hundredth) time they have seen each other.

Jack beams at Danny, and there is an echo of mischief and childhood friendship there. Merritt tells Henley she is beautiful, and she blushes with a laughter from a dozen lifetimes ago.

A year (a hundred years, a thousand years) from now, they will look at each other and wonder, what now?

This time they meet, they fall in love, and they fall hard. And later, when Merritt will not be able to tell if that is Jack’s arm or Danny’s, when Henley will laugh and it will sound like Daniel’s, when Jack will guess what Merritt is thinking before he even says anything, they will forget where (when) they have been.

**Author's Note:**

> My life is probably over now. I'm stuck writing fic for the rest of my days.


End file.
